Shipping case



1951 T. J. NELSON 2,570,973

SHIPPING CASE Filed Feb. 24, 1947 I v 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Fl G. 2

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INVE NTOR Patented Oct. 9, 1951 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE SHIPPING CASE Theodore J. Nelson, Crockett, Calif.

Application February 24, 1947, Serial No. 730,248

My present invention relates to fibre shipping containers, such as those used for example, to

enclose and protect food products in individual cans or paper cartons. These shipping containers, or shipping cases as they are commonly termed, are used in practically all types of merchandising and in the aggregate their fabrication requires an annual quantity of approximately 4,100,000 tons of paper board. During the war years of 1943-1945 inclusive, paper pulp was exceptionally scarce, and all possible means. were devised to save paper. either as a saving of area or of weight used. This shortage has perslsted, and an outgrowth of such searches for economical design is couched in the improved construction described in my prior application [filed March 6, 1946, and assigned the Serial Number 652,370.

An object of the present disclosure is to minimize the paper board area used in ordinary case fabrication, whilst retaining all those characteristics which make for ease or storage prior to use; case of filling; conventional closing by either manual sealing or mechanical sealing; and the provision of unimpaired side-wall strength and closure flap construction that does not deviate from accepted practises currently recognized by the freight carriers.

A further object of the present disclosure is to avoid the waste of board area incidental tothe fabrication of cases known as special slotted containers, hereinafter described, whilst retaining all those characteristics that make for convenience in case usage of that style of case.

A further object of the present disclosure is to optionally provide heavier-than-usual case board construction, if desired for added shipping or stacking durability and protection of contents, -whilst confining overall paper board consumption by weight to the amount theretofore consumed. Such added durability is particularly desirable in periods of board scarcity, because board quality in such periods customarily suffers corresponding declines due to a scarcity of those better grades of pulps required to insure optimum strength.

. illustrate the application of this blank assembly (Figure 2) to provide complete overlapping of nap areas '(shown in Figure 4) for cushioning 2 Claims. (Cl. 22937) value or other reasons, without an excess use of board area in the original blank.

The commonest style of shipping case is known as a regular slotted container; or simply an RSC case. It, as is well known, is formed from one large rectangular sheet or blank of paper board. Conventional creasing, and slotting or cutting towards but not to the center of this rectangular sheet, in appropriate places, permit setting up a shipping case of rectangular form having 4 closure flaps on the top and 4 closure flaps at the bottom. The 4 flaps in each instance are of 'equal length, the magnitude of which is the shown in Figure No. 1 may be cut to obtain the distinct advantage of cutting full sized blanks of a size no greater than enough for the intended purpose. A joint at 9 of gummed tape or other conventional method joins these two blanks into a completed slotted container case blank ready for conventional assembly as in Figure No. 3. In this construction the combined widths X and Y of flaps 2 and 4, and of 6 and 8 are made equal to W and hence they are suflicient to cover respectively the top and bottom of the case shown in Figure No. 3; these flaps meet at line 20 which is parallel to the length of the case, but unlike the conventional RSC case the line of meeting does not fall in the center of the top and bottom panels of the improved case. Although the board used in making flaps 4 and 8 is slightly greater than it would be in a conventional case, the

board used for flaps I 2--3, 561, is less than that in a conventional case. In the aggregate, the saving for the completed off-center case is equal to twice the difierence in slender rectangular areas A and B designated in Figure No. 1, since a like economy can be effected at the bottom of the case blank.

In conventional case practise there exists a special form of slotted cases formed from a larger than usual rectangular blank of paper board,

which is creased, slotted, and trimmed to provide interior case flaps that meet in a transverse central position. This full overlapping provides side.

cushion value for fragile contents. These interior flaps are necessarily longer than the halfof-case-width exterior flaps, and the board area removed in trimming the outer flaps, down to size, represents a waste of the original continuous expanse of board selected.

In providing for the improved, off-center special slotted container, outer flaps H and 15 as long as the inner flaps are provided on a threepanel blank as in Figure No. 2. To this a onepanel blank with short flaps l3 and I! is joined at l8 and this completes the material needed for the complete case blank. The assembled case is shown in Figure No. 4, and it will be noted that the respective long and short outer flaps meet in an off-center line 22 and that interior flaps by design meet in the center of the case 23, or approximately meet as' the service requires. By obtaining these three-panel and one-panel blanks as two separate complete rectangular sheets, subsequently joined at l8, and by thereby avoiding any trimmed waste areas, the area C shown in Figure No.- 2 is saved. For the complete case,- the area saved is twice that of C, since both the top and bottom flaps I3 and I! can be foreshortened. v V

It is recognized that the provision ofmultiple joints in case construction to utilize small or odd shaped panel members is old in the art. Bliss describes numerous combinations of mer it, for example,- typical of which might be cited Patents 1,584,972 and 1,697,709. Such cases can be made economically from the standpoint of minimum underlayering of flap areas in the closure thereof and the expression Bliss Box has become nationally known among case fabricators and users alike.

For some case users, existing circumstances make it desirable to forego the advantages of making cases from a multiple number of component parts that are rigidly joined into a rigid container ready for filling. In lieu thereof, such container users must resort instead to'tlie conventional RSO case which can be stored in a collapsed form while awaiting filling.

The off-center case described in the present disclosure is conventional from such standpoints as: ease of storage while empty; adaptability to closure by simple manual taping or gluing, or by conventional mechanical case sealers after suitable mechanical adjustment; and fiat storage while awaiting either first use or re-use after an initial trip. Suitable adjustment of the conventional mechanical case sealer will be evident to those familiar with such equipment when the nature of the off-center case described herein is understood. To adjust the conventional case sealer for a given width of case in the instance of conventional cases, the glue rolls, side rails and related features of the sealer are moved into, or away from, as the circumstance may be, the equipments longitudinal center-line, the movement being exactly identical in magnitude on each side of the center-line. The equipment ordinarily eifects this equal movement by features intentionally incorporated in its design. For the oif-center case described herein, this equality of movement is replaced with a setting by which one side of the equipment is moved further away from the center-line than the other The off-center case is of course presented to the case sealer congruously.

Th off-center case retains the use features common to conventional shippingcases, and has the distinct advantage of permitting the underlayered flap area to be reduced to the extent of that permitted by the limitations of security of the area left for closure, and by limitations of the nature of the contained merchandise or the nature of the closing operation in effect. For cases of the common shape, the novel construction described herein permits an economy of board area to the extent of approximately 10%. Greater or lesser board savings are dependent on exact circumstances of case use and case shape.

An added novelty of the present disclosure lies in the provision of case-flap construction that permits increased underlayering of the inner flap-board area if desired, whilst avoiding the need to trim out waste area in forming the outer flaps. This advantage is also obtained whilst retaining those desirable features of use and durability that are associated with the conventional shipping case. While for the sake of clearness, in illustrating both by word and diagram, fibre shipping cases made of paper board have been referred to, I desire to have it understoodthat the objectives are not limited to shipping cases nor is the flap construction to be construed as being confined to paper board as a fabricating material, nor to a case blank formed from two joined components.

It is believed that this invention is broadly new and it is desired to claim it as such so that all such changes as come within the scope of the appended claims are to be consideredas part of the invention.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim and desire to secure by Letters Patent is:

1. A rectangular paper board shipping case formed from two separate blanks joinedto make the whole, one blank having creasesextending horizontally to define respectively a long outer top flap for the case, the flap length of which is less than the linear width of. the case but is greater than one-halfthis width, define a principal side panel for the case, and define along outer bottom case flap similar to the outer top flap, and the second blank having creases extending both horizontally and vertically to define respectively an end side panel for the case with appended short top and bottom inner case flaps, define a principal side panel for the case with appended short top and bottom outer case flaps, and define an end side panel for the case with appended short top and bottom inner case flaps, the lengths of all three short flaps thus formed for the top of the case being equal, and the lengths of the three short flaps formed for the bottom of the case being equal, their respective lengths beyond the crease being fixed by the numerical difference between the linear width of the case and the length already selected for the corresponding long outer flap on the first blank.

2. A rectangular paper board shipping case formed from two separate blanks joined to make the whole, one blank having creases extending both horizontally and vertically to define respectively an end side panel for the case with appended long top and bottom inner case flaps, define a principal side panel for the case with appended long top and bottom outer case flaps, and define an end side panel for the case with appended long top and bottom inner case flaps, the lengths of all three long flaps thus formed for the top of the case being equal, and the lengths of the three long flaps formed for. the bottom of the case being equal, their respective lengths beasmm 5 ing greater than one-half the linear width of the case but less than the full width and not greater than one-half the linear length of the case, the second blank having creases extending horizontally to define respectively a short top outer flap for the case, define a principal side panel for the case, and define a short outer bottom flap for the case, the respective lengths of the short top and bottom outer flaps being fixed by the numerical difierence between the linear width of the case and the length already selected for the corresponding long outer flaps on the first blank.

THEODORE J. NELSON.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Number Name Date Bauer June 5, 1883 Osborn Mar. 16, 1915 Brady Mar. 15, 1921 Forsman June 6, 1933 Cook June 20, 1933 Messer Nov, 10, I942 FOREIGN PATENTS Country Date Great Britain Dec. 11, 1922 Great Britain Nov. 15, 1923 

